He hasn't even attempted to win the ball, he just swiped his ankles.
Definitely! All hail Sir Waistcoat.
England have a good chance of winning.
Not predicting it will, but wouldn't be too surprising.
They'll go out in the quarters / semis once they play somebody good.
Not. A. Chance. Dunno when they'll go out, but they'll go out.
It's been too long. A group stage calamity beckons.
Drunk turtle with a flare sticking out of its bum.
He hasn't even attempted to win the ball, he just swiped his ankles.
After the replay, that's a dive, surely?
Did he save the pen with his face?
He milked it for all that it was worth, but Rodri knocks his left foot at first.
Yeah, he clipped his own ankle and went down. Although I haven't seen the full replay.
lol.
So much lol.
Well, they're getting all the bad luck Lewis ordered.
This is dogshit.
Spain and Germany turning up I'm form is not good news for England. We need the equivalent of the year that Leicester won the league if we're to win it.
Mate, you're one of the favourites according to James.Originally Posted by Spikey M
It doesn't matter that he says that at every tournament now, IT'S COMING HOME.
He has STATISTICS on his side though.
Don't think Spain look that great defensively.
Neither will England.
All I've ever said about England is that they have a very good generation of players and are perfectly capable of winning a tournament. They've correctly been among the favourites since I started saying this in 2018.
"But they haven't won one!!". STATISTICS innit.
It's alright, Joe Hart says it's not a problem, although his reasoning was a bit left school at 14.
England are more than capable of winning this, even with the defence, their attackers are miles ahead of anyone else. It'll be only Southgate that stops them if they are stopped.
Yeah the old school engerrrlund arrogance was always a bit much, but people acting like we're fucking Austria or something every tournament are retarded. Saying we'll fuck it up cus we always fuck it up is one thing, but to knowingly scoff at the bookies making us one of the favourites when we do genuinely have one of the best teams is fucking stupid.
And if it's being done as a deliberate reverse jinx, grow up.
Also using previous tournaments as some kind of pretend evidence is even more fucking stupid, they're different fucking players.
It's like when commentators say something like ohhh stoke have real trouble against crewe, and it turns out they've not played each other since 1997.
Frattesi and Pellegrini both playing is surely curtains for Albania if it wasn’t already. Coming out all guns blazing.
I'm a twit
I know I’m a weirdo but 3 lefties in your back 4 gives me the fear
Hahahahahah
That's fucking amazing. I'd be losing my mind if I was Albanian.
What a start.
Quality assist.
Turns right the fear was validated. Look at the body position
Itloly
That pleb who threw trying to cover his bald patch by bleaching a triangle into his hair is a novel approach.
It really isn't - there's something that runs through the national psyche of major international football teams and far more often than not it's very evident.
It's like Spurs always being a joke. Different teams, but still the same old lolfest.
I do think there's some truth to this, but it's massively overstated.
Well worked corner.
Or it's just a descriptor that's applied to teams that go on runs of not winning anything. Then they win something and nobody ever mentions it again.
Yea and in international football the sample size is even smaller.
I think this is the case if teams are roughly as good as each other across the years, i.e. all of those good but not great Spanish teams BOTTLING IT across generations. The players we have now are miles better, across the full pitch/bench at least, than we've had before.
This feels like a golden generation of sorts for Albania. I remember recognizing one or two players in their squad, but now most of their squad is playing in the big leagues.
It's applied to far more than just teams that haven't won for a while. Germans being obscene at penalties, us not. South American teams always having a complete shithouse in the side. The Dutch being excellent at self destructing. Etc.
They're not miles better, but they are good enough to win a major tournament.
This group stage set up should be dogshit, but once again it's producing some really good games.
Poor Albania
Relative to the quality of other teams, I'd probably agree with that. However, the team is lopsided (like what is our actual defence going to be?) and we have a manager who has consistently proven he simply does not have what it takes to take the team to the next level.
He's also built a style of play that relies on a defence being vaguely competent (as we're not attacking enough to go toe to toe and outscore teams) and banking that we have enough quality up the pitch to score a goal or two. We definitely have the latter this time, but if our defence is as bad as it might be Sir Gareth will have nowhere to go - he's not suddenly going to become Jurgen Klopp overnight.
Yeah but this is just descriptive, it's a bit of a logical fallacy to use it to predict future events. Its also easy to see England's tournament failures through the lens of some kind of national bottling mentality, but like - we lost against brazil cus David Seaman had a mare, we lost against Argentina cus Beckham got sent off, see also Rooney against Portugal. We failed to qualify in 2008 cus we were just a bit shit. 2012 - lost on pens, it happens. And so on and so on. Some bad luck, some poor sides, and in recent years we've actually done pretty well. Lost on pens in a final that we should have probably won - again, poor management by Southgate imo, not cus England always bottle it.
I know humans have evolved to try to see patterns in everything, but sometimes you have to try to ignore the ape inside you, you get me.
Yeah the manager is toilet, and likely to be the main reason for us not winning this, but recent tournaments defeats have been squarely on him making crap decisions rather than the team being vaguely bollocks for some innate cultural reason like in 2004 or 2006. We would have done France and Italy with better substitutions, but those knock-outs against Portugal were almost inevitable in hindsight.
Yeah exactly
Was Sven actually that useless at game management or did he just have nothing on the bench? I know he single-handedly ruined England friendlies with his dogshit rotations, but when Rooney got injured in 2004 he brought Darius Vassell on, and when he got sent off in 2006 he brought Peter Crouch on for Joe Cole. Vassell on for Michael Owen in 2002 as well fucking hell.
I can see where you're coming from but our defeats over the years tend to boil down to doing just enough to lose (I mean, look at those you've listed for a kick off). Now I wouldn't go so far as to say we're bottlers, but there's been something missing time and time again that stops us being winners and it isn't just the players and managers. Look at the apologist nonsense that came out after the France defeat - "the boys did well", "we could have won". I've had enough of the could, or that we're among the favourites. If we're that good let's just fucking do it, as all of the other larger nations with great players in relatively recent history have done.
EDIT: It's not like we haven't had the opportunities either.
Last edited by Yevrah; 15-06-2024 at 07:39 PM.
I mean, the top scorer in our nation's history (and by some distance now I may add) missed a penalty. We'd have lost anyway, as it's what we do, but had he not completely fucked that it would have at least given Sir Gareth another opportunity to do something horrific from the sidelines.
And then, rather unbelievably, a narrative developed that it was somehow a bad decision (or even unfair on Kane) to expect him to take and score two penalties in the same game. It's proper loser talk.
When I think back to watching England as a kid, it feels like Darius Vassell was always playing.
Sven did have a thing for Darius. Pace was a relatively recent thing back then, so I'm guessing that was what was driving it.
Obviously played a lot of llm on FM.
I'd put Ollie Watson and Ivan Toney in the Vassell bracket. If Kane gets crocked, we are not blessed with a decent back up.
Who is Ollie Watson?
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